Sedan Day
After the proclamation of the German Empire on January 18th, 1871 in Versailles, those voices multiplied in Germany, which asked for a national holiday and it seemed reasonable to suggest the date of the battle of Sedan as a commemoration day which was so closely associated with the proclamation of the empire.
Already in spring 1871, a committee of church Protestants and liberal circles addressed a petition to Wilhelm I. with the request to name a day which could be celebrated as a proclamation day of the empire. The emperor did not want to commit himself, however, and answered vaguely. Instead of ordered celebrations he rather hoped that, bearing some resemblance to the memory of the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig, the events of the war were kept within the population the memory by spontaneous commemorations. The Westphalian clergyman Friedrich Wilhelm Bodelschwingh had another go in June 1872 and suggested September 2 as a date for a thanksgiving and peace festival.
By 1873 the Sedan Day gained more and more acceptance opposite an also considered annual spring festival of the proclamation day of the German empire (January 18th, 1871) or solemnities for conclusion of peace in Frankfurt (May 10th, 1871) as the Berlin municipal authorities favoured it. However, it never attained an official character since Wilhelm I. did not want to declare it the official holiday. Since the Sedan Day was celebrated, however, by festivities on order of the Prussian Ministry of Education at schools and universities since 1873, it had nevertheless at least the character of an official memorial day to the Franco-German War. In many Prussian small towns like Camburg that day was used to the inauguration of war monuments.
Since the beginning of the Sedan festivities there was an ongoing discussion about the content of the solemnities. By the inauguration of the Berlin Victory Column on September 2, 1873, decorated with cannons from the Franco-German War, the military component of the German Unification agreement was emphasized considerably, above all among the guests - the imperial family, a variety of German princes as well as military delegations from the whole empire - the uniforms dominated the scene. This aspect still was underlined by the annual military parade of the guard corps held by Emperor Wilhelm I. on the occasion of the Sedan Day since1873. For Wilhelm I. September 2 was and remained primarily a day of honour of the army, particularly the Prussian army. Although the parades did not take place every year on September 2 for scheduling reasons, the symbolic reference to the Sedan Day remained unchanged. However, when Emperor Wilhelm II postponed the parades until the middle of August, it lost some of its meaning.
The Sedan Day experienced a change of its meaning in1890. Was it till then mainly an annually recurring military victory celebrations on the occasion of the battle of Sedan, now the empire unification was more and more placed in the foreground. A reason for it was the succession of generations within the emperor dynasty. Wilhelm I. primarily still considered himself a King of Prussia and the Sedan Day was for him the memory of a Prussian victory which resulted in the proclamation of an empire the consequence whose crown he had accepted only reluctantly. However, his grandson Wilhelm II., who ruled since 1888, felt primarily as a Kaiser (emperor) and as such promoted the national component of the Sedan festivities. Simultaneous, the day also was for him primarily an armed forces anniversary in which he never got tired to appeal to discipline and military fulfilment of duty. Furthermore he tried to promote the mythology of the Battle of Sedan as well as the personality cult around his grandfather as the scheduled inauguration of some Emperor Wilhelm monuments, about 1894 in Königsberg and 1896 in Breslau (Wroclaw), demonstrate.
The end for the Sedan Day came on August 27th, 1919, when the home office of the Weimar Republic declared that there were no more Sedan Days in the future, since they would not correspond to the present state of affairs.